Ray Takeyh on 10/7, Hamas, and Iran

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

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🗓️ 17 November 2023

⏱️ 67 minutes

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Summary

To what extent was the Iranian regime involved in Hamas’s attack on Israel? What role are other Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah playing in the conflict—and where do things stand with Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon? To discuss these questions, we are joined again by Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the leading historians and analysts of Iran. Takeyh explains that the survival of Hamas remains a key strategic goal for Iran in sustaining its “axis of resistance” to threaten Israel. The regime also uses these paramilitary assets including Hezbollah, and especially its nuclear program, to deter the United States and Israel from responding directly against Iran. Takeyh also reflects on Iran’s relationship with Russia and China, its role in the Ukraine War, and the threat to global order posed by the alliance of authoritarian states.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again.
0:20.0	Our first conversation was about a year ago by Ray Tache, a senior fellow at the
0:26.5	Council of Foreign Relations, very distinguished historian, history PhD from
0:31.2	Oxford, author several books on Iran and the Middle East
0:35.7	were broadly but focusing on Iran. Very must reading. You should go Google them and
0:41.3	buy them and help them out here and but no really terrific
0:45.4	stuff and I think one of the geopolitical analysts who really puts things in a deeper
0:51.2	historical perspective so Ray thanks for joining me again.
0:54.3	Thanks very much for having me again. No, it's good. So I'm really looking for a year ago we
0:59.3	discussed domestic developments in Iran. We'll get to those at the end of this conversation. They're still interesting and maybe undercover now a little bit.
1:06.5	But let's talk about the war in the Middle East in which Iran is sort of a participant or and which has all kinds of implications for our broader
1:15.8	Middle East policy and our policy towards Iran. So October 7th I guess the
1:19.7	obvious question to begin with is how much was Iran involved in the Hamas attack on
1:25.3	Israel? Well to begin with the we have to start with this point that Iran would have no objections whatsoever to Hamas attacking Israel.
1:36.0	And it would have no objections to Hamas attacking Israel in the daring and reckless manner that it did so and inflicting the casualties that it
1:46.1	did so.
1:47.1	So it would have no problem with this scenario as it played out.
1:50.0	Now here are the couple of things that we know. In summertime there was a lot of traffic between Hamas leadership and Iran
1:57.1	in a sense that they would go to Iran for discussions,
2:00.4	even with the top leadership that was covered in the press and after one
2:04.2	such meeting Hamas political director said that Iran is providing them 70 million
2:09.1	dollars in military assistance particularly he mentioned missiles.
	...

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